ARE YOU DOING WHAT A-PLAYERS ARE DOING???

Now, what do you see as a difference between like an A player and a B player from your experience?

Definitely see some trends over the years with the different industries and different situations I've been in. But I think there's definitely a few traits that really stand out to me with that true kind of A player sales rep compared to other ones out there. I have Quite a few that come to mind, but I think one thing for sure that has come up a lot is mindset. I think when you really have that A-player mindset mentality, that's— you can definitely see that. There's some other ones like patience, especially in those complex sales industry. If you're kind of in that instant gratification world, it can be tough to be successful. So patience has been a big one and Trying to not talk about some of the cliché ones, but there is a lot of ups and downs. So I think how do you kind of navigate that and be kind of resilient over a longer period of time, I think is a big one too. So there's, there's a few others that come to mind, but those are probably the few at the top. Patience, having, having the right type of mindset, and then being able to navigate the ups and downs and be pretty resilient. I think that really stands out. Because a lot of these people might have pretty substantial talent, but talent doesn't necessarily get you to that A-player level. So these other kind of non-tangible things, I think, do get you there.

Yeah, because if you take the classic separation of skill set versus mindset, you know, you need both, of course. But, and then you divide each of them into what are the skills, what are the mindset things. And what I used to do is I would put a little spreadsheet sheet or a little matrix, and I would put, you know, the best reps, the medium reps, and the rest. And then, you know, what did I think that separated them? And we always think it's like personality, and that's part of it. And then you get into the platitudes. But if you really drill down on it, you know, it can be any mix you want. And it depends on the sale and it depends on your personality. I think too many people get stuck in the style thing where I have to change my— you don't have to change your style. You know, for the last 7 years, I've been interviewing the world's best salespeople and there's patterns, but I've seen introverts, extroverts, former ministers. A lot of bartenders, a lot of waiters, a lot of psychology majors, uh, one person out of the Ivy League. So I, I think you first have to like think or not think about it, it being just the people who are successful at your company. Because you're right, if you get the right territory and the timing's right That person looks like an A-player. And you can— then you make the false belief that sales is all about territory, timing, and talent, which is just a big cop-out because you have no control over timing, little control over influence over territory, 100% control over talent. They always put talent at the last. And, you know, in certain companies that can make sense if you get the right territory that, you know, someone would been working on and they laid off or leave and you get the account and there's 18 months of work into it and you get to show up and give a proposal. You look like a hero. But does that make you an A-player?

I don't think so. But if you know some of those territories, let me know, because I, I've been trying to find those my whole career and it never seems to happen.

Well, I'm always the guy that's there before then, you know, because when I— exactly, I left one company, 6 months later, $800K deal came in from something I'd been working on for a year and a half. But, you know, and that person now looks like a genius, I think. As salespeople, what, what can we do to become an A-player? I think we first have to understand our sale. And I think too many people kind of just whitewash it. I see on the comments on LinkedIn, oh, you're making this too complex. It's all about relationships. And it's like, and people can say that and they're It's, it's not a lie, but it's not complete. I think what we've got to do is like, for your sale, what matters most? How important is business acumen? How important are relationships? How important is context within the account? How important is your time management? You know, the things that we all have control over. No one pays any attention to like time management, but it's one of the You know, first principles that we have in our deals is time. If we had infinite time, anyone could become an A-player, but we don't. It's a year.

It's so true. And it really does depend on the type of industry that you're in and how complex the sale is. How long is the sales cycle and what— how do you kind of match that with your personality? To your point, I mean, I don't think many people think about that. They just kind of go into these industries or sexy companies that are doing well or jobs that seem like they'll be a good fit, but they don't really think about how it matches to their personality. And I mean, for example, I think most of the times I've seen people that have been the A players, they're always working on less, getting more out of less. So that time management, they're working on those bigger deals, not always just whale-sized deals, but they tend to be the ones doing that. And it's like, How do all these people keep doing that in these different situations? Because they're going deeper with the right types of accounts. They're prioritizing correctly and spending their time the right way. They're not burnt out making 100 calls a day. They're focused going deep on, on a few areas. And that's been consistent no matter what industry I've been in. And I think really thinking about what fits you best. I mean, I, I got some wake-up calls because I've changed industries a few times. I mean, I thought because I'd been so successful in power tools and climbed the ladder and done all this stuff when I was at Milwaukee Tool, which was great, that I could just walk right into med device and, and do the same type of thing. And I rested a lot on my, my personality, my relationships. I had previous success. I mean, that gave me confidence, which was good. But then I realized, okay, hey, this is a completely different situation. They don't care what I did before, and you can get eaten alive if you kind of have that mentality coming in there. So I pretty quickly was like, all right, I got to get my, my butt in gear and take this to another level. And that was coming from growing existing accounts aggressively, like I was dealing with Home Depot, to then pretty much a straight new business type of situation. So not realizing how much different that was, I think a lot of times people will just hire these sales reps from different companies and then they come into a new business situation and that's not a good fit for them. For me, I was able to figure it out and it it ended up being a good situation, but a lot of times it's not. And I think either the rep doesn't know what they're getting into or they get, or they're not, they don't understand it fully or it wasn't explained right. And then they're not really mentally there to be a new business type of sales rep constantly hunting. So you need to know what you're good at and what you have. But I do think some of the things are pretty consistent across it with, with like mindset, accountability, a lot of these things that come up a lot, uh, no matter what, those are going to be key to, to be successful.

Yeah, I think if you understand your sale, like, I think you made a good point with the focus and making the most out of the— what I always called the precious few, you know, because I would sit through these QBRs and, you know, people would put up 15 deals, but I always looked at what they closed last quarter.

Okay.

Because if you close 3 deals for, let's say, $150 grand and you're forecasting $1.5 million with 15 deals, something's wrong because all that time you spend on deals that don't close is at best education. And I think the better the salesperson, the more focused they are. And the other thing is they tend to be very independent thinkers. They're not running to their manager every time. What should I do here? What do you do then? What's the best way to handle this? They are taking personal responsibility for the deal and ownership of it, and they're not at the the water cooler at the happy hour complaining about all the things that are wrong. Comp plan sucks, manager sucks, CRM sucks. You're right, they do.

So what?

It feels good to vent it, but you're just, you know, circling the drain. I think if you really take your sale and decompose it not into activities, but the process that the client goes through, where it gets stuck, and see what the best people are doing. Are they going top down, bottom up? Are they doing it as a lone wolf or are they doing it as a pack? What makes those deals happen that isn't just charm and personality? Because that gets the first meeting and that gets a conversation and it continues. That becomes— you're likable, but people don't buy anything but commodities just because someone's likable. And I think too many people get comfortable. Well, I gave them the best service. Well, we're not in service. You can give great service, but if they don't buy anything, you get no commission. And I think too many people today think an A-player is somebody who shows up, does what they're told. The Boy Scout. That's not an A-player. That's at best a B-player. The A players are the people who get it done despite all the obstacles that people have. They're the ones that if the manager tells them to do something stupid, they don't do it. A B player will jump at it because B player thinks like an employee. A player thinks like a salespreneur. They know it's their responsibility to close the deal. Doesn't matter how bad or how little support they get. Doesn't matter. They've got to close the deal and they know how a deal flows instead of reacting to the customer. And the number of VPs that comment on my post about how companies make a decision is so backwards that they use checklists and ask them about their process. You're asking somebody who doesn't know It's like a doctor coming into you. So, yeah, your shoulder hurts. How would you like me to operate on it? You're like, what do you mean? How would I know? That's why you're the doctor. And this is how most people today are selling. They're reacting to what the customer wants and believing in the BS that all these experts are touting. Mutual action plan. Okay, let's have 2 people who don't know what they're doing come up with a plan on how to do it. Everyone checks everything off, but there's still no order. It's the blind leading the blind.

Totally agree. And that sort of self-starter entrepreneurial mentality, treating it like your own business. I mean, the people that are those A-players are typically treating it like it's their own company, own business and they're investing in it in different ways. Probably going to be more commission focused in that situation, but I think they really invest into their territory. They invest into getting better professionally, personally, and that self-starter. They don't have to go cry to their boss and ask a million questions. If there's something urgent, obviously eventually it gets to that level, but I totally agree on that one. And then there is more of a trend. I mean, you always hear about the rainmaker. Mentality and how that's always been the classic kind of sales personality. But, and I mean, to some extent that's going to help in a lot of situations, but I think it's, it is more process-driven, more analytical. I'm traditionally pretty introverted, but I'm very analytical, process-driven, focused. And that's boded pretty well for me over the years. So if you can create systems, make it repeatable, you can't wing it in a lot of these situations. So you have to, I mean, people are going to You'll get it. You'll get a few meetings if you have a good personality, but how do you actually get it to the finish line with that mutual action plan you were talking about? You gotta have a process, you gotta have a system. And I think the people that have done really well, and that's more of a newer trend, I think, in sales the last probably 5 or 10 years, those are the type of people that are getting it done because you can't get enterprise-level things that far if you don't have a process or system. And then one thing too that I know helped me, and I think I see a lot of those A-players do is they are open to feedback at times when it makes sense. They are coachable to kind of keep getting better and improve. They don't— even though they have good years, they don't take themselves too seriously and they're always open to getting better and not getting complacent. So that's a common thing is that once you have a good year, you just kind of rest on your laurels and don't get after it at the beginning of the next year. But these A-players, they'll be open to feedback. They're always trying to get better. Things are always changing. So how do they keep improving and being open to that? I think that's another thing that really stands out to me from, from all these different salespeople I've interacted with.

Yeah. Instead of it being an identity thing, because if you ask most of the top people, they wouldn't say they're an A player. You ask most B players and they will say they're an A player.

Yeah, A players are humble. They're humble typically, right?

Because the more he— they learn, the more they learn how little they know. Because it is kind of this Russian doll that you keep recursively opening up, and that can be daunting to a B player. B player wants to keep it simple. You know, you want an order, here's a quote. Good luck. I'll make it up in the numbers. That's what they're really comfortable with, the pipeline. A-players view the pipeline as it's either real or it's just placeholder. And I think a lot of people get comfortable calling themselves A-players because they don't want to do the work that it takes. And they blame it on the territory, the manager, the product, and they tell their history.

You can—

oh, I was number one at jojo.com, and this is why, you know, you guys are so lucky to have me here. The number of times I've heard that conversation in my career, and it's like, why can't you sell anything? Oh, no leads. And why can't you sell anything? Right. It's just There's always this alibi for why they can't do it instead of like digging in and trying to figure it out. And they spend all their time coming up with the reasons why it's not working instead of trying to find a reason for it to work.

Definitely that lack of accountability, that, that's a big one. I mean, it's, it's hard to be honest with yourself. As a salesperson, and there's always a million excuses out there—the territory, the company, the supply chain, economy. Those are always going to be there, and they could be true. I mean, there could be some crappy situations you get brought into. But to your point, if you're constantly worried about everybody else and what's happening, and not focused on what you can control, then that's definitely not an A player mentality. So I think the people doing that are definitely the B players trying to act like A players. And if you can be truly accountable, I think. that's where you take it to a whole nother level from, from a sales standpoint and, and own up to your mistakes, learn from them, learn from other people's mistakes. I mean, that's where you're really kind of taking it to another level. And I know you've talked about this many times in the past, but I think being genuinely curious about your customers and really kind of putting yourself in their shoes and trying to see it from their perspective and wanting them to talk more, way more than, than you, because a lot of these B players, They want to talk the whole time about themselves and all the great things they're doing. So if you can be curious, put yourself in the customer's shoes, I think the customers are going to see that. And that's why these people are closing the type of deals they are, because they're actually, they care about the outcome. They care about making that change, the ROI, and they genuinely want to hear what that other person's perspective is versus the other way where it's just you trying to shove everything down their throat. And that's what most of the B players, C players do is they're just talking about themselves, their company, the features and benefits. But you're not gonna see A players do that. They're, they're gonna be doing the complete opposite most of the time.

Right? Because the A players understand it's not just logic and they don't get stuck in the idiot trap of, okay, I, I go and I give a logical argument for why you should buy and if you don't, you're an idiot. Okay. Again, you might be right, but you didn't get the order. And I think too many people think selling is just that talking piece. But when you're done talking, do you get an order? It's not B2C. No one's giving you a credit card. Okay. The person you're probably talking to has zero budget authority. Has probably never ushered a purchase order through the system before, has no clue what that involves, assumes it's really easy. Their wish is someone else's command. And so the salesperson believes that instead of trying to understand where they fit in the company, what's behind this, who else cares about this, what's their reaction going to be? See, I think you first have to understand the game you're playing to play the game. And I think too many people are playing the game that they're told at home office, which is designed for warm inbound, you know, well-understood requirements, a realistic timeline. It's order taking. And if you have enough of that to crush your number, congratulations. But That's not what I'm hearing. I don't hear many reps say, you know, I'm overwhelmed with opportunities. It's usually they're working on a stretch, some deal that they got pulled into that they're number 7 out of 7, and they fight for it. And are they even really being considered? But it's a big number. It fills a great place in the pipeline. Who knows? Instead of really taking each opportunity and say, is this winnable? If it is winnable, how do I win it? And what is my strategy? And how can each step put a little test in there to see if my reality is right? Because when you use words like accountable, you know, it's like, okay, you become the, the prisoner and the warden. And guess what happens? You become the warden. You don't become the prisoner. You tell yourself what you want to hear to make yourself feel better. You know, the brain is not seeking pain, it's seeking pleasure, and it'll do anything to avoid pain, including lying to yourself, which we all do. How do you make it through a day without lying to yourself? It's a rationalization, it's explanation, it's excuse. And a lot of that's fun, but you don't learn that way. And the good part about being at a company is you get to see mistakes all day long. Write them down because you're probably going to do it too. They're not idiots. They're working off of emotion too. They want the order. Here's the proposal. Whoops, did I send that? I pulled that back. They're not thinking through it because they're working off of emotion. And the only way to do that is to either write it down or have a full-time coach next to you. You know, because what does every addict do? How do they get clean? They hire a sober coach, someone to be their prefrontal cortex. So when they get a little hijacking of their brain and they want what they can't have or shouldn't have, someone else is going, nope, nope, nope, give me that. Come on, go back over there. And that's what we need sometimes. But it takes a long time to develop that, you know, emotional regulation or detachment from our intuition because everything in the complex sale is counterintuitive. Nothing happens logically. You try and get a piece of paper through an organization, it feels like Radar O'Reilly from M*A*S*H in the '70s. I don't know if you ever remember that. It was like he was assigned to get things that the colonel wanted, and he knew the system. So he had friends everywhere. He would call up and he'd have a network. I do a favor for you, you do a favor for me. And he was able to get supplies and everything else. And keep this, the hospital running. He was the, the go-to guy. And in sales, that's kind of what we've got to do with these deals. Because nobody's in procurement waiting, hey, do we need to buy something today? Let's get something bought. No, they're like, oh, that's not right. You got to get that code. Get that code for me. And everyone's got to figure out what the code is. Do they need the code? No, they don't need the code, but we gotta do that. Get a credit check. All this BS that we have to run the gauntlet through. And if we don't help our client through that gauntlet, the client may just give up because it's easier to just, uh, maybe stick with how they're doing things today than try and justify this thing that the company should want to buy from me.

I have watched a little bit of M*A*S*H, but I don't know that specific scenario as well as you. But I do, I did watch that show back in the day. But some of the stuff you're mentioning there makes, just makes me think about patience in general. So not only, I think specifically with your customer, because a lot of these situations take a long time and it's so easy to just pounce and respond to the customer and send that proposal, whatever they ask you, you just email it or give it to them right away. But you actually need to be way more patient and control that environment. And it's going to take a lot longer to close the deal, but in reality, or in your mind, you think it's going to delay the deal, but it's actually going to speed it up if you do it this way. But you have to detach from that instant gratification world that we live in, which is really tough to do with social media and everything. So being patient with these deals, I think, is a huge trait of those A players. And you can see that too, because these deals typically take 6, 12, 18 months depending on the situation. And on the flip side of that with patience is that all these A players that we're talking about, I mean, it's not easy to get to that level and it takes time, effort, kind of learning your craft, getting better at it, all the stuff that we're mentioning. But it's not like it happened overnight. You see these people be successful. Sometimes they do walk into a perfect situation, that territory like you talked about at the beginning. But a lot of times they probably have been through the wringer. They've gone through a lot of ups and downs and it took them a while to get to the point that they're at. And I think these new people coming in sometimes will just assume it's easy. to get to that level and make that type of money. But most likely there's a really good story behind that person and how they got to where they're at. And it took them a long time to get there. So you have to be patient with the customer and the sales process, but also you can't expect to be making half a million dollars, you know, right out of the gates. You got to be like working to that. And then once you get there, it's not easy to maintain it either. You have to keep being proactive and, and have that non-complacency mentality. So I think that's a huge thing that, and then people just give up, right? So if it's going to take that long to be successful, a couple years, multiple years, they just throw in the towel and then they go to the next new shiny job or situation and then you have to start all over again. So it's kind of counterintuitive. So I think at some points, probably in my career, I maybe didn't wait long enough to like really see some of the fruits of it at times. But I think these A players, they're probably staying in similar situations or places for a long period of time and getting really deep with that company or that specific industry. And then that's when they really start to crush it as well.

Yeah. So, I mean, you have to have that judgment to determine what you have, you know, because when your prospect says, can I get 10 points and we'll get it done? What do you do? Oh, here's, here's 15. Get it done by Friday. And then you find out You just gave 15 points and got nothing in return. You think you're getting it by Friday. Friday comes and goes and you're like refreshing your inbox and it never comes. You don't know how the game is played. You're, you're not even playing the game. You're playing their game. And I think most reps are playing serve the prospect, go fetch. And guess what? You can get that bone as many times as you want. Go catch that Frisbee and bring it back. It's not an order. And it pays zero. And I think with patience, you got to understand it's not just waiting. It's understanding what is going on, who you're talking to. You know, because when you talk to reps, what's their sign-off? They don't know what that is. What's their online procurement system? They have no idea what that is. They're basically demo dollies, meeting setters, proposal givers, and then checking in. If that's your sales process, that's not selling, that's servicing. And if that succeeds in your market, Stay there because that's not what the real market's like. Because the real market is, oh, people see a demo that, that one person wants it, but now we've got to get the company willing to pay for it. It's a very different thing. And most reps just send a proposal and I'm sure it'll come through someday once they get budget. People don't even know what a budget is. Isn't it money? Kind of. And, and it's not the rep's fault in a lot of cases because their manager doesn't know. And most of the CEOs that I interact with on LinkedIn, they don't have a clue because they want it to work the way they show in their deck that they got to the investors. You know, you get the total addressable market People in market, people that convert, people who demo, and this little funnel thing. And you're like, okay, you, you sit over there and play with that. So what do they do? Why did we go down this route hiring SDRs? Because one company had success the way they did it. We had inside reps and outside reps for 20 or 30 years before then. But, oh, one company has success. Now we gotta unify everyone's approach to copy that and call them that, hire them with zero experience because they did. Even though before it was really a career, inside reps was— it was a different career. Sometimes it was a step up to be an outside rep. Sometimes it was just lifetime thing, or they became inside manager or whatever. And all of a sudden everyone focused on the cost of sales instead of the top line of sales. Believe me, the top— the bottom line of sales is very easy to control. The top line is very difficult to control. Anyone can control expenses. You can just lay people off. That's how they control it. It takes a half hour. That's how you control expenses. That's what everyone does. Now try and increase revenue. What? Uh-oh, we gotta have some meetings about that. That's not as easy.

It's true. There's, there's a lot that goes into it and that whole inside versus outside sales reps and, and the landscape now is pretty interesting for, for another topic as well. But it's not easy to be an A player. There's a lot of things that go into it. But I think if, if you do some of the stuff we were talking about, it's, it's definitely achievable, but it's gonna take some time. You gotta be patient. And, and make it happen.